Road Transport Forum chief executive Ken Shirley has welcomed a new school curriculum resource developed to help teach safety around trucks.

The curriculum resource was developed by NZTA with input from the RTA and is designed to provide learning activities that have as their basis the practical setting of truck safety.

“The Transport Agency‘s work is based on a lot of research around how children learn and what kind of teaching is effective,” says Shirley. “The kind of sustained exposure to an issue that this curriculum provides is the perfect vehicle to ingrain knowledge of how to be safe around trucks and the importance of road transport to our communities.”

Shirley says teaching children to be safe around trucks is a valuable life-lesson, and the fact NZTA could assimilate that into curriculum topics for science, maths, social studies, health and PE will make what the students learn so much more relevant to them.

“Teaching children the fundamentals of physics by analysing the mass and speed of a truck and its potential stopping distance is an example of how truck safety is applied through this curriculum.

“It is also a great way to teach children about the role that trucks play in moving freight around the country, while allowing them to look into the future, their future, and explore potential new transport technologies.”

Important messages about safety around trucks that are in the resources include:

• While you can see the truck – the truck driver may not see you.
• While you think you might have time to get across the road – the truck is actually travelling faster than you think.
• Trucks are much bigger and heavier than cars, so give them extra space on the road.

“I encourage as many schools as possible to use this resource. I also applaud the efforts of NZTA‘s education and freight teams in putting it together and am glad that the road transport industry through the forum has been able to help develop it,” says Shirley.